Dr Hattie Bessent
Ed.D, RN, FAAN
Dr Hattie Bessent is director of the Leadership, Enhancement and Development (LEAD) Project at the American Nurses Foundation.
Hattie’s contributions to nursing in the domains of practice development, academic achievement and the advancement of nursing as a profession for minority ethnic nurses in the United States are considerable.
As a specialist in the sphere of mental health practice development, Hattie has travelled and lectured extensively in the States, and has worked hard to improve both access to care and the quality of that care for all people. Her extensive knowledge and expertise has seen her work with a number of US government agencies, such as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, on numerous aspects of the delivery of mental health services to minority ethnic patients. She has also advised US senators and their representatives, and has sat on the Presidential Commission on Mental Health.
Her contributions to professional nursing development are extensive. In the US she is particularly noted for her role in helping develop people from minority ethnic backgrounds for work in nursing and health care, and has become an internationally recognised authority on the preparation and utilisation of this group of people in nursing. Her many studies and publications on trends on this work — patterns of access, utilisation, and barriers to success in the workplace — have won grants from both the US federal government and private foundations, and have helped shape and inform nurse training programmes across the States and the Caribbean.
More recently, Hattie’s efforts have been focused on developing minority ethnic nurses for leadership and senior management roles. During her 17 year tenure as director of the American Nurses’ Association Ethnic Minority Fellowship Programme, more than 200 minority ethnic nurses have been encouraged to become research scientists and supported to receive PhD degrees. Currently she heads up a leadership development project which aims to expand and enhance nursing leadership training, preparing participants for roles as heads or chief executives of nursing education programmes at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Participants in the LEAD programme have benefited from exposure to the many influential people that are part of Hattie’s extensive international networks. These researchers, scholars, and policy writers serve as teachers and discussion leaders in the LEAD project, ensuring that cross-disciplinary examination of issues and problems becomes embedded in experience of today’s developing professionals.
A prolific writer and educator, Hattie has travelled the world in the pursuit of knowledge and expertise. As well as influencing the corridors of power at Capitol Hill, she has obtained grants and accepted invitations from a number of bodies to lecture and share best practice, including the Black Nurses Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the International Council of Nursing and the World Health Organization.
Over the years she has consulted with nurses around the world on access issues, and has served as a role model, teacher, mentor and preceptor to hundreds of individuals. Universally acknowledged for her work over a career that spans 30 years, she’s received numerous awards and honours for her contributions to professional nursing development, including the American Academy of Nursing’s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.
For her exceptional contribution in many areas of nursing, most notably in the domains of practice development, academic achievement and the advancement of nursing as a profession, especially for minority ethnic nurses in the USA, and for her life long pursuit to improve access to care for all people, RCN Council conferred Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing on Hattie Bessent in 2007.